Become a Fan

05 December 2013

It takes a long time of working in kitchens to develop a knowing over-the-shoulder glance at what the wake of your boat means. Like reading tea leaves, one has to drink a lot of tea before one notices patterns at the bottom of their saucer.

How long should you stay with a chef, in a kitchen, for a company, in a city? These questions can only be answered by you, or your mentor.

As you move towards your various goals, you should be collecting people who know from whence you came, where you're at, and where you'd like to go. You should be part of someone's collection to. As we say, stick with the winners. Wherever I work, I notice people who should be noticed, and I add them to my basket. You never know who will be your next boss, or hire.

A woman wrote to me recently and asked:

"How do I go about finding the right chef and getting a position with them? Who do I contact about getting jobs in certain kitchens? Is it uncouth to contact chefs directly? How do I make my desire for knowledge known to certain individuals?

To which I answered:

You should be trailing as much as you can. Not necessarily for a job, but for the experience. There are few chefs who will turn down a free worker for the day.

Aim high. go through zagat and mark down every fine dining place. those houses have pastry chefs and teams. eat those people's desserts. every day you should be going out. if you can't afford dinner, call ahead and see if you can get desserts at the bar. THIS is your research. if you like what you eat, ask for the pastry chef's name and send your resume -- by SNAIL MAIL. say you ate their food and you want to work for them.

be prepared to move cities. if what you want to be is a chocolatier get as much experience with america's best. do you know Sahagun / Elizabeth Montes in Portland, Oregon? her chocolate is amazing, but very different than the frenchies. if you're with your future spouse I can't imagine that person will die if you move elsewhere for a year for your education/career. of course I don't *know* your situation, but this industry can offer so much more if you're able to travel.

Stage with Chef Migoya at Hudson Chocolates once a month if you can't get hired right away. THAT'S AN INCREDIBLE OPPORTUNITY and you would be a fool to pass it up. Seriously. Not only is he brilliant, but he KNOWS EVERYONE AND EVERYONE KNOWS HIM!

send me your resume. I'll pass it on to some people I know.

when you trail a place, talk to the other pastry assistants. get a read on the kitchen. are the dishwashers happy? is the kitchen clean? does the boh respect the foh? are people staying for a long time? when you're trailing a kitchen you should be PAYING VERY CLOSE ATTENTION to the WHOLE KITCHEN.

do as much research on your future kitchen/chef/pastry chef as you can. {I can't tell you how many cooks are ridiculously lazy about this! now with google no one has any excuses not to look someone up.}

stop working for people you don't admire.

pick jobs where you are completely over your head. run to catch up. and eat as much as you can all over nyc - every borough! travel/explore/use this city.

Then she wrote to me again. She said she couldn't move cities. She said she really needed to start making some real money. She said she needed health insurance. She said she wanted to habve kids soon. She said she thought she was ready to be a pastry sous chef. She sent me her resume. I had already guessed where she was working. I was right.

In her words:

"I am at a point in my experience, and in my desire to go all in, over my head, where I am more than ready to take on the role of sous chef. Not only will it challenge me as I wish to be, it will (hopefully, most likely) also provide me with a salary commensurate with my skills, and add the bonus of medical insurance, possibly. I am no perfect chef, not by a long shot, nor do I know more than any number of pastry cooks out there, BUT, I have such a strong desire and will to lead, teach, give, and share what I do know. The core necessity here is money, but the inclination toward teaching and leadership is strong too."

My response:

On the subject of money and saving for your future:

there are few jobs in this industry that pay well. even when you become chef/enter management, what you get paid, divided by the labor needed, comes out to little more than rent, transportation and the odd night out.

take out a calculator and enter in a series of numbers and you'll see what I mean. ie: if you make $40k as a pastry sous that's $769 weekly gross. divide 769 by 60 hours = $12.82 an hour, gross, which is about $9 an hour after taxes... Increase the yearly by $10k and then divide it by 70, 80 and 90 hour weeks.

if you want to make a lot of money, go to the hotels, or union houses like The Four Seasons.

but know this: IT'S EXTREMELY HARD to go back to A. an independently owned/non-union wage house, and/or B. a non-management position, once you've gone after the title &/or the $.

it's also hard to get "learning" positions after you've gone after jobs just for the title &/or the $.

What I mean by all that: it's easier to learn the right way the first time around, than get your bad habits beaten out of you by someone who *does* know what they're doing. *think of it this way: if you were me/or someone else you respect, would you hire You at the place you're at, to be their sous chef?*

Just because you're "already" in a position of teaching etc., does not necessarily mean you're ready for a promotion to management. ALL assistants and cooks should be teaching/showing/leading/practicing! I was an assistant to many many pastry chefs before I was promoted.

Once you take a sous position, the minimum commitment is two years. Are you ready to make that commitment to your chef & the house? if you are, you must think very carefully about whom you choose to give that promise to.

Maybe you think you're ready to be a pastry sous chef because of who your chef is right now. You might not think so if you were working on a bigger team, in a more established house, with a badass pastry chef... Some things to consider.

There are loads of chefs out there who aren't ready to lead. Leadership skills are but one fraction of the skills that great sous/chefs posess. There are also a lot of chefs who think/believe they're ready/want to lead, but they didn't have enough or very good teachers/mentors, and when they're in charge of a real kitchen with real rules and real bottom lines and real cooks with real problems, they implode.

You're not the first cook to choose money so soon in their career. I've seen loads of cooks get promoted to sous long before they were ready. Many people get promoted just because the chef needs someone to work more than 40 hours. IF YOU ARE TO BE IN CONTROL OF YOUR LEARNING, YOU HAVE TO BE CRITICAL OF YOUR SKILLS.If you're not capable of being critical about your skill set/level, chefs and restaurateurs will seduce you into roles you're not ready for. That's a promise.

There are plenty of chefs out there who chose/choose making a family over working crazy hours for little pay. This is as good a reason as any to change kitchens/chefs. The only prize you should be keeping your eyes on is YOURS. If you know what YOU Need, go after it.

I added some footnotes~

You should be trailing at at least one kitchen a week on one of your days off. never get too comfortable. There's no such thing as a trail being a waste of time. The worst trail is better than the best first date. Even if you see a dirty, disorganized, lazy kitchen with shoemaker cooks and inedible food, you'll know what not to do/where not to work/who to work under, in the rest of your career.

As your resume reads right now I would say you need at least two, but preferably three more years of working for badass pastry chefs, on amazing teams, in solid houses, under your belt, before venturing out as a sous chef. If you don't feel like you can afford to work like this, go immediately to a house where you can grow into that position fast. Houses that come to mind: Locanda Verde, The Four Seasons (resto not hotel), Marea, Del Posto, Gramercy Tavern, Lafayette, Buddakan, Daniel, Jean Georges, to name a few. I can send your resume to all these pastry chefs, but the rest will be up to you.

Lastly I added specific feedback about her resume.

Cooks resumes these days are at an all time low. Some of the errors are egregious! Whetever happened to spelling well, not mixing tenses, and leaving off jobs we worked at for less than a year? Final word of wisdom: get real critique/feedback about your resume before you send it to a chef you respect/admire...

...which brings me to -

I'm starting a new service:

Send me your resume & $25, and I'll critique it before your next job interview. Seriously, yo, your resume is you. Most chefs I know these days, including me, erase ten times more job queries than schedule interviews. If you want to cook professionally, and get better and better jobs in great kitchens, with serious chefs, you must represent yourself better! And it starts with that word document...

01 September 2013

Happy September. The city's summer quiet comes to a close this weekend, as if tying off a scarf one began in April.

So much has happened since I wrote on eggbeater last. I'm sorry to have been away for so long, but oftentimes what is going on for me in a given kitchen, on a job, is not mine to tell, wholly, and I can't always figure out how to tell it diplomatically. I'm sure you understand.

Also, to be fully transparent, I've been cheating on you. Since April.

My new paramour is Medium.com and the room we do it in is called The Egg Beat. I'm profiling pastry chefs. The idea is to give press to pastry chefs directly, without the middle man of their employer's website. Most pastry chefs aren't even named on their dessert menus, or acknowledged by print media journalists, or credited for their recipes in cookbooks! Most pastry chefs have no "name" until someone "discovers" them.

I think that's ridiculous, and I aims to change the playing field.

Let's face it, most professional cooks don't have the time, (or desire), to self-promote, or they don't really know how to use the-social-media-platform-of-the-moment. Twitter is about as much as anyone can bear, and there's a lot of katchka dreck to contend with, making it impossible to find the pastry chefs who aren't on TV.

So this bi-monthly column is a way to recognize the people behind the pastry. Maybe introduce you to an intuitive baker, a punk rock chef, a pastry chef making chocolate dirt or a chocolatier setting up shop in an old bookbindery factory. I'm writing about modern and old school pastry chefs alike. I could be writing about a pastry chef near you, or one halfway around the world.

At the end of this month I'll be participating in the Star Chefs International Chefs Congress in a few different ways. On the Sunday (if all goes according to plan) I will be one of the "Floor Judges" for the Pastry Competition, and the next day I will collaborate with my good friend Amanda Cook making baked goods to highlight heritage grains* from New York State. We will have a table as part of the eat@ICC "food court," if you will. Look for "A Bite of the Big Apple."

16 December 2012

A sous chef I worked with once said to me, with no irony or malice, "In this business you can have a romantic relationship or friends. You will not have time for both. You will not have energy enough for both."

Another cook told me, "You will miss all weddings, births, funerals and holidays. Get used to it."

If you work from dark to dark and sleep and do laundry on your one day off, you do not become an ideal candidate for dating. And if you never RSVP to family and friend functions, you will completely drop off their radar, piss them off and it could take you another lifetime to gain back their trust enough to 'schedule you in' to their lives again.

There are many chefs who prefer working in a kitchen to being in their parents, children, friends, partners lives. There are many cooks who could work more efficiently and get out after 10 or 12 hours rather than 14 or 16. And there are chefs who prefer to go to the bar after work, rather than home.

There's not a cook amongst us who will not argue, til death, the necessity of our presence in our kitchens. Kitchens are indeed like underground clubs. They are "our" people. We "understand" each other. Our cooks "need" us. Without us our kitchens will fall apart! Days off?! Who needs them?!! Shoemakers, that's who! Our stations will be a fucking mess if we don't micromanage them 20 hours a day.

There are chefs out there who can sustain multiple "lives" while remaining consistent and effective leaders and inspirationalists at their stoves. They can have friends and lovers. They can go to the occasional wedding or funeral without having to quit their job. They can get sober and stay sober. They can get eight hours of sleep a night. They can own a dog and go on dates and make meals at home.

I agree that the first 5 years of cooking should be solely about cooking. Maybe 10. But in that trajectory a cook can begin to make life choices as well as kitchen/chef/cuisine choices.

For the first time in my career I have a romantic partner, a relationship with my family, friends from inside and outside the industry, and there's talk of getting a d. o. g. Even though I live with my partner, he and I have opposing schedules and sometimes we don't see each other, awake, for days in a row. For the first time in my career I need, but also want, to devote as much energy to building and feeding my primary relationship as I do my kitchen, my chef, my cooks and our diners. Sometimes he even calls me out if I give all of myself to the restaurant and leave nothing for him on our days off together.

There are, and have always been, chefs who buck the 24/7 rule. There's many ways to skin a rabbit.

When I was at the French Laundry, Thomas would sit down with all the cooks at the end of the night to write down the next day's menu. We would all inventory our stations and the walk-ins for mis en place and the sous chef would begin an ordering sheet. We would all start our next day's list. Sometimes we would talk shop.

One night we were discussing the James Beard nominees. Thomas was asking us who we thought he should vote for. A chef's name came up. One of the cooks really liked him and spoke up. Thomas asked the cook if he knew about an incident that chef had been involved in just a few month's previous. He did not. But I did.

This chef was in charge of a restaurant inside of a hotel, both of the highest caliber. There was no doubt his food and technique were spot on. But he offended a female server one afternoon with a disgusting comment. When the union of the hotel asked the hotel management to reprimand him, the hotel management said no, and the union staged a walk-out. Until the hotel management made themselves and that chef accountable for his actions, there was no one to serve the food, clear tables or wash dishes.

Thomas made an important point that night. He said that to honor a chef with an award was not to merely recognize their cooking abilities, but to reward their role as a leader in the industry as a whole.

As a cook you are faced with a number of options. You have to "choose
the winners." You have to look for your next mentor all the time. You
have to constantly re-evaluate what Chef you have chosen to inspire you
and why. As you grow in your confidence and skill you will be able to
take in the whole of a Chef. Your Chef as Chef, as Leader, as Human.

And humans are social creatures. We grow mentally, spiritually, physically, sexually, emotionally, psychically, when in contact with many sources of heart, inspiration.

This industry has an invisible voice. It will tell you you have to make a choice. It will tell you to choose the kitchen above all else. While I have done this, at times, I beg of you to hear the quietest of all voices. Listen hard. Hold your ground. Keep your eye on your prize. No one else's goal[s] need be yours.

You can work towards getting out of the kitchen in under 12 hours and let your kitchen be independent and learn how to make and solve mistakes and face challenges without you. You can walk into your kitchen tomorrow and choose this. You can delegate and pass it on and teach and inspire and push while you are there, and while you are not there you can go to museums and read books and make love and look at the horizon and see the stars and feel the sun on your face and get a massage and be a witness at your best friend's wedding and sleep in and make porridge and bundle up your kids for their first snow and go to the farmer's market and

all of these activities can be a recipe unto themselves for You. To marinate in, to support, to water your own garden. When all we are to our cooks is our own insularity, our own tunnel vision we do not teach them anything but what comes out of a washing machine on rinse cycle for far too long. It is important, and vital, to our abilities as leaders and executioners and food makers to see beyond our own noses. Relationships beyond our kitchens are important and necessary.

You can have more than one relationship and cook professionally. You can, and be a great chef one day.

04 April 2012

I like to say my g_d has a sense of humor. A notoriously tricky one, I dare say. Not exactly sinister, but definingly dry and definitively abrupt, like the person who pulls a tablecloth out from under the table settings, practiced or not, at the art of subtlety, grace or confidence.

Some friends of mine and I like to say, "sometimes g_d is doing for me what I can not do for myself."

Sometimes you're the tablecloth and sometimes you're the hands and sometimes you're the grip and sometimes you're the smile about to break and sometimes you're the dishes that tremor but do not shatter and sometimes you're the surprise and sometimes you are the glass that cracks but does not fall and sometimes you're the idea to do such a thing at all and sometimes you're taken by complete surprise.

Challenges will always arise. It's how we react, rise, reach to/with/into them that transforms us.

I'm not saying these tricks don't ambush. We navigate as best we can with tools we continue to sharpen or wish we did not own or wish we did.

Strangely I feel grateful for having once experienced a grief so great, so large, so dark that I came to know its attributes, its tides, and can now, sometimes gracefully, sometimes awkwardly, stand in it's course and let it wash over/pass through me, understanding that hope, that light-a comprehension of the incomprehensible; an untangling of confusion and answerless questions, is possible and not out of reach.

One day at a time.

For all loss is loss, no matter it's timing, no matter its reasons, no matter its warnings.

If we are interested in re-defining success we must also define failure differently. If we are interested in re-defining success, we must discontinue to draw ink lines where permeable ones would delineate more accurately.

The snake swallows its tail. There are no endings, only beginnings. Success is not virgin birth.

I proceed, as Peels recedes. I am proud of all I conceived, built, produced, organized, systemized, learned, celebrated, conjured, inspired, taught, realized.I built a bakery. Whether the owners/investors re-shape or remove it, or do what they need to do to insure the space makes them the monies they need to reconcile their bottom line, I remain proud of that which I bore from nothing more than a hope, a wish, desire, a love of baking so strong I have no words to describe it. On the day before the first day of Spring, the owners and I bid farewell, shook hands and thanked each other for the opportunities we gave and received. More than anything I'm happy for what they gave me. Wood and linen. Staples. A canvas to stretch on my own. Freedom & belief.

Be not sad for me. The life-force of a restaurant is the same as a person-it adds, expands, subtracts, grows and shifts; feathers shed; wings are clipped and grow back again; going for as long as it goes, rarely staying the same, or wanting to! The bottom line of a spreadsheet is the outcome of a list of percentages that are ingredients: a recipe for a healthy enterprise-one which not only feeds, but nourishes.

Wondering what's next? I've had some ideas on the side, shelved, proofing in the oven, on hold, hibernating, waiting, restless. I've been placating them with excuses for a long time now. "Not now, I'm opening a restaurant." "Not yet, I'm hiring a team." "Soon, I promise."

Remember how I said my g_d has a dastardly sense of humor? G_d is nudging me to keep my promise...

Thank you a zillion times thank you to everyone who came in brought friends & family & introduced yourself & ate & tasted & worked & staged with me and for Peels pastry department & everyone who allowed me to make your birthday cake & wedding cakes/pies & photographed & wrote about what I was doing & interviewed & surprised me & gave me critical feedback & made suggestions & put me on the radio & tv & took notice of what my bakery was trying to achieve & came to the Ice Cream Social & ordered your Thanksgiving pies from us & I really do hope to see and feed you all again wherever I land with my whisk and Baby Offset Spatula next. I won't soon forget you, {as I hope you won't, me} Your support has meant so much to me and that which I am attempting to speak through my baking.

01 March 2012

The James Beard Foundationhas just published their extensive list of semifinalists for 2012. There are dozens of names listed in every category. My name was on that list last year. It was a cause for great excitement and anticipation. While I didn't make the nomination list, being a semifinalist is enough to put on a resume and feel proud of. To be noticed and recognized by the James Beard Foundation is a wonderful thing. And none to easy for a pastry chef, for which only 1, in all of the USA, is chosen per year.

Excellence. Passion. Achievement. Success. The James Beard Foundation Awards shine a spotlight on the best and brightest talent in the food and beverage industry.

Covering all aspects of the industry—from chefs and restaurateurs to cookbook authors and food journalists to restaurant designers and architects and more—the Beard Awards are the highest honor for food and beverage professionals working in North America.

Why do they matter? In The United States of America a James Beard award is considered the highest honor for a chef.

And then, bam! Once a year a list comes out. The names on it are ones we know, ones we've hard before; some we're surpised by, many we're bored of hearing about. When we read the winners, we're happy there are so many of them it takes a minute to realize there are so very few in the categories of Pastry Chef, Baker, Chocolatier. It takes you another minute to realize there's only 1 award for Pastry Chef Baker Chocolatier. 1.

One James Beard Foundation Outstanding Pastry Chef a year.

In all of the United States of America. A small country, I'll admit, but still. Really? 1?!

How are the awards determined? There's general, legalese information on the James Beard Foundation website under the title "Policies & Procedures." And then there's the critique by Josh Ozersky in Time Magazine. But for the "real deal" see what a JBF Judge says about the process, the criteria, for voting on and choosing "the one," out of hundreds of thousands.

How can one award once a year, define us? It can't, of course.

being a chef is part pirate, part whore, part punk rock, part cop, part junkyard dog, part priest, part cog-in-the-wheel, part junkie, part celebrity, part sell-out, part pawn, part athlete, part mother, part judge & jailer & lawyer, part diplomat, part lunatic, part model, part artist, part factory drone, part convict, part philoopher, part conductor, part jock and stoner both, part prat, part citizen, part murderer, part numbers-cruncher, part mayor, part politician, part polyanna, part bad guy & good girl both, part craftsman, part jailer, part tornado, part scoundrel, part construction worker, part radical, part accountant, part do-gooder, part thief, part doctor,

part indefinable.

Chef. A recipe with a list of unattainable ingredients. Incompatible parts. And there are so many of us.

But because the James Beard Foundation yearly awards are where it's at, I beg you to write them requesting a Regional Outstanding Pastry Chef Award, as they do for savory chefs.

The James Beard Foundation has repeatedly wowed me over the years with their commitment to honoring culinary professionals of all kinds in the United States—not only are the crème de la crème of the industry acknowledged by the JBF, but also professionals who are just beginning their careers; professionals who use food as a way of giving back to their communities; professionals who write about food, photograph food, and even design spaces where food is served. Professionals, who just like the JBF, set the standard for the nation’s industry.

My first introduction to the James Beard Foundation was in 1999. I was finishing a program in pastry arts at Kendall College, 19 years old, and embarking on my career as a pastry professional in Chicago. My chef, and former JB Nominee, Don Yamauchi and pastry chef Celeste Zecola of Gordon were asked to cook the last two courses for a “Friends of the Beard House” dinner at Crofton on Wells; I was invited along to assist. It was at that dinner, in the company of amazing chefs and former James Beard Award winners such as Charlie Trotter, Norman Van Aken and Carrie Nahabedian, that I decided, I, too, wanted to become a friend of the Beard House. I, too, wanted to strive to win an award, as Pastry Chef of the Year. I still have the menu from that evening; it serves as a reminder of my goal, and as a reminder of my respect for the James Beard Foundation’s endeavors.

Fast forward twelve years, and many James Beard dinners, benefits, award ceremonies later and while I still dream of an award, my dreams have broadened slightly. Now I dream to make a lasting impact – an impact that will garner recognition for more of my peers and for the pastry profession as a whole. I found myself sitting in the auditorium at Lincoln Center last spring thinking, “One pastry chef award a year just isn’t enough to honor all the hard work and expertise of pastry chefs nationwide.” Just as the cuisine of savory chefs varies throughout the country by region and season, the desserts of the country’s finest pastry chefs do as well.

The baking and pastry industry has flourished in recent years. Television shows like Top Chef: Just Desserts have top ratings; schools are being dedicated solely to the art of baking and pastry; films like Kings of Pastry, chronicling the World Pastry Cup competition are in theatres nationwide; pastry chefs have celebrity status and are becoming household names; restaurants are highlighting their pastry chefs nearly as much as their head chefs; enrollment in pastry-based culinary programs has increased by 50-75% in the last handful of years. With the field of baking and pastry growing at the rate it is, wouldn’t it be wonderful to see the James Beard Foundation rise along with it?

And so my question to the James Beard Foundation, its Board of Trustees, and its National Advisory Board is this: Would the James Beard Foundation consider honoring pastry chefs within regions just like they do savory chefs? In just the last few months, I have mentioned the idea of award expansion to several of my pastry and savory chef colleagues across the country, chefs who are both former JB Award nominees and winners, and every single one of them agrees—awarding more than one pastry chef a year would be a tremendous acknowledgement to the pastry profession from the organization that the pastry profession respects most.

Many thanks for your time and consideration. I look forward to working with you soon.

Please send a letter-- especially if you are a cooking for a living. Please write a letter if you [or someone you know, know of, respect, love and or admire, are inspired by] are now, or want to be: a Chef, a James Beard Award Winner, a Pastry Chef, Pastry Cook. Or believe Pastry Chefs should get the same recognition as Savory Chefs.

01 December 2011

Chefs are {in}famous for posessing many traits. Patient & Understanding are not two of them. Not high on the list at any rate. We're famous for more popular antonyms like hot-tempered and unforbearing. We bristle at critique, take everything personally, and have a hard time listening to reason on the job. We don't love change. Especially the change that comes when a cook gives notice.

I have worked for all kinds of chefs. I wanted to work for as many chefs as I could before "becoming one myself." I saw as many management styles as I did kitchens. The chefs who struck me the most were the ones pushed, challenged, listened to, grew, mentored, inspired, learned from and sent off their cooks when their "time had come" in said kitchen.

It takes incredible generosity, grace, maturity, humility, confidence and intuition to be such a chef. A chef has to know when a cook can go no further under their wing, in their kitchen, in one location. Said chef has to have been paying attention to said cook throughout the entirety of their term. From interview to stage to hire.

I have said this before and I will never stop saying it: Do not waste your precious time learning this life-long craft in a kitchen where the chef only looks at you like a warm body. Do not work for one minute more in a kitchen where you are not learning, not being challenged, not growing. There are so many fucking kitchens to make no money in. You might as well struggle to make ends meet under the tutelage of a chef who matters and to whom you matter.

A chef I used to work with used to say there are 2 kinds of chefs: The Sharing and The Stingy/self-serving ones. The Sharing Chef will always talk about their sous chef, their chef de cuisine, their staff. The Sharing Chef will eat at other restaurants and talk about other chefs besides the ones under their jurisdiction. The Sharing Chef will tell other chefs about great products they've found. The Sharing Chef will share staff. Sharing Chefs sometimes trade cooks before promoting them in their own kitchens. Sharing Chefs do not poach.

The Sharing Chef is not a touchy feely person with only pleases and thank yous and nicey nice things to say all the time and smiling and handing you the kool-aid and giving you sick days and knowing the name of your dog and giving you your birthday off.

The Sharing Chef can kick your ass so hard your spine ends and your thighs begin. The Sharing Chef can make you cry on the line, and keep working. The Sharing Chef can blackball you and call you names in languages you don't understand. The Sharing Chef can scare the shit out of you, down to your core, and help you to understand that she/he knows everyone in the business and you better not fucking burn that bridge.

The Sharing Chef, afterall, has the same pressures as the narcissistic one. Margins to meet, food costs to keep down, GM's to reckon with, owners to keep happy, diners to feed, dishwashers to fix, cooks to train, walk-ins to clean, invoices to log, uniform companies to argue with, fish to scale, burns to treat, and so on.

The Sharing Chef can help you get the next job as much as The Stingy Chef, but there are distinct differences.

The Stingy Chef barely teaches. The Stingy Chef believes their own hype. The Stingy Chef is often bitter. The Stingy Chef will watch you do something wrong/incorrect/inefficient and never correct you. The Stingy Chef will take credit for your work when it's great and put your name on what's wrong. The Stingy Chef doesn't mind a cook who isn't growing, learning, asking questions. "The Stingy Chef wants you to know s/he is the best and doesn't particularly want to "prove it" to you-- either because s/he is a secret shoemaker or because to "bring you up" is to face the possibilty of you being better than s/he."

Sometimes a Sharing Chef will look like a Stingy Chef because you're so fucking cocky the only way they can put you in your place is to make you 'beg' for knowledge. Chefs who have worked for dozens of years despise a cook who thinks they know it all after five minutes in the business. Some Sharing Chefs are quiet. Very Quiet. Silent even. Sometimes you have to watch them, be in their kitchens, show your dedication, for years, before you realize you are learning from them.

It's possible that The Stingy Chef and The Sharing Chef are the same person. It's possible both kinds of chefs are who you'll be.

But you have a choice. An active, intentional choice. A choice is something you decide, you make. You don't fall into choice by mistake.

See the red flags? They're not waving you in.

Many chefs are at the helms of stoves are just cooks in disguise. All it takes is a white jacket. Chef is a self designated title. A lot of people can cook in a professional kitchen. As many people can "become chefs," if they have the desire.

But it's not the word Chef,

It's what you do with that position It's what you do with that title It's what you do with that rush of power It's what you decide will be your management style It's how you decide to repay what was given to you It's how you choose to be remembered by your cooks, your industry It's your integrity It's your standards It's how much patience you have for your own journey in the craft It's how much you understand what craft means It's how hard of a look you'll be brave enough to muster the courage for, to see yourself for all you are It's how much humble pie you can swallow, whole It's how many tears of joy and struggle you're willing to admit will be on your horizon

that matters.

Can you handle the tedium? Can you do the same thing day after day, kitchen after kitchen, city after city, year after year?

Craft. A verb. A noun. A daunting task. An unforgiving journey. Un unattainable goal. A life spent asking unanswered questions.

*

Some concrete examples:

When I worked at Gramercy Tavern there was a cook on the line who was clearly kicking everyone's ass. I watched, I learned, I admired. It was obvious she was ready to be a sous chef. Tom gave the ok, but said 'You have to do something first. You have to work somewhere else more formidable first, for two years, and then you can come back here a sous. You'll work at Le Bernadin.'

When I worked at Citizen Cake our savoury chef worked all of his cooks through the stations and when they could not learn any more from him he gave them an end date and helped place them in their next jobs.

The first chef I worked for gave me reading assignments {before the internet-- I had to go to the Library} and lent me books to study.

When Thomas placed me at Bouchon, after working at The French Laundry, in my first Pastry Chef role, I said I wasn't ready. To which he replied, 'You'll never be ready. I'll put you in shoes too big and when you fill them you'll know it's time to move on.'

Sherry Yard told me once, before interviewing dozens of pastry cooks, 'You want to hire people who want your job. They're the one's who will keep you on your toes. They're the one's you'll learn from.'

When I arrived in London for my month long interview/trail at The Bread Factory the owners wanted me to replace the pastry chef they had in place. When I went into his kitchen under other pretenses--of course he knew-- he not only did not let on but made me feel at home in the most humble, gracious, generous, gorgeous way possible.

*

These are the chefs I aspire to be like. Not the chefs who put their name all over my work every time I received press under their roofs. When a cook gives me a proper notice I honor their last weeks, days, hours, with the same respect they've shown me in their resignation.

I want to to teach cooks what I was taught.

These are hard lessons. Chefs don't put their arms around their cooks and teach them the ways... That shit is the stuff of two dimensional fairy tales.

Not every cook is the right fit in your kitchen. Not every cook can handle promotion. A cook can look ready and deteriorate under middle management pressures. Not every cook makes a chef who is a leader and a teacher or can delegate effectively. Some cooks continue to lie to themselves and you no matter how hard you push them, toward the truth.

You have to find a teacher. Teachers. Mentors. You have to move. You have to want. You have to desire. You have to fight. You have to keep knocking on doors even when none of them open. You have to follow-through. You have to suit up, show up and shut up.

And chefs? We're in charge, yes, but we're fallible. We make mistakes. Watch us. Watch how your chef acts when she/he makes a mistake. Watch to see if your chef grows too. No one wants to work in stagnation. That water fucking stinks.

There's a difference between patience for repetition and boredom/stagnation. Careful of bouncing from one kitchen to the next-- thrill seeking, if you will. Oftentimes if you can handle the boredom that comes with month after month of sameness, a year passes and you take the elevator down a floor, to the next level of intimacy with that chef, that team, that cuisine, that menu, those four seasons and their ensuing dishes.

Patience has its rewards.

I could not Chef, mentor, inspire, push, challenge, promote, share with, listen to, manage or send off cooks well until I had experienced being a cook under the tutelage of chefs who did these things for me and other cooks around me.

I could not do or be any of these things, until I made the choice that this was the kind of chef I wanted to be. Until I made the choice that this was the mark I wanted to make.

24 January 2011

One busy Saturday night service, many years ago, my station partner and I looked down the line, at one of the meat cooks, and knew something was amiss. There had been an exchange between him and our expediting sous chef that none of us were paying much attention to until our sous raised his voice and squelched that meat cook's words. My partner and I looked down the line and saw that cook just standing there. His knife bag was on his cutting board and he was looking at it.

This might not sound so odd, but in the final minutes before service begins and your ticket machine starts chinkity click clink clinking into it's sputter of endless tickets, time both condenses and elongates like nod sentences on slow motion. You can't stop moving, you can't stop doing,

you are never ready.

You never have time to stand stock still. And your knife bag is no where to be seen. You've been using your tools for hours and they won't find the dark resting place of that knife roll until well past the violet hour.

Service begins. We are at the ready to serve 500+ people 4 star food with 10 cooks on the line not including the expeditor. We have 3 dining rooms, six menus and there's no room for error.

We are about 45 minutes into service when this meat line cook says, "I gotta go."

The air leaves the kitchen and every cook freezes, for a nanosecond. None of us dare to look up. Our sous yells at the line cook. Screams. Rails. All front of house is concrete. Cooks keep cooking. Sous and Line Cook sit under a theater spot light and meat cooks gives in. He starts cooking again. We exhale. Carefully.

And it's right about then I feel the air in the room shift. Tilt. Electricity ankle high. I am working two ovens, sauteeing and quenelling 25 ice creams my board is full my partner has plates out we're garnishing like mad I'm yelling for runners and plates are getting wiped as they're lifted off the pass

and

I see in my peripheral vision

that that meat cook has turned his back to his grill and is packing up his knives. He has long curly hair and it's obscuring his flattened face. He shows no emotion. He is a quiet artisan, slowly taking care of his tools. The rush of service, the cacaphony of kitchen, the orders barked and directed and a kitchen orchestrated is madness, all around him.

The sous says little. We dare not speak. We watch

in complete disbelief.

The line steps one step closer to stoves to let him pass when he walks out.

He walks out in the middle of service. On Saturday night. In one of New York's best, most popular restaurants.

The ticket machine doesn't notice. The diners don't give a shit. They want their four star food. Now.

It's surreal, and we all know. We all hope

that that is never us.

But what we don't know, what we don't want to believe, what we will fight tooth and nail to forget, to stay in denial with, to shelve, to subjugate, to keep at arms' length, or better yet-- as far away as we can, is that

One day that will be us.

Sooner than we think.

There was a running joke in that kitchen ever after that night. When we were in the weeds, which was always, but right before service when our nerves were on high alert and we watched the clock banging out its last seconds before the ticket machine would go from sleeping to fourth gear, one of us might say, "I gotta go." laughing in that easy way you can never laugh like again

after it's you.

After it's the you that has got to go. No matter what the fuck is happing in the kitchen. No matter what your leaving does to your fellow cooks and chef and those clueless diners happily perusing the menu.

-----

We have a few pieces of advice concerning 'life outside the kitchen getting in the way of work/cooking" for cooks in this brutal business of professional cooking:

Leave it at the door. Use your job to avoid your life. Workaholism is the best forgetting drug. You can cry, but you gotta keep working. You can hide in the walk in, but you won't be alone. There's no part-time in the kitchen. If you can't come with 1000%, don't come at all. Preoccupation causes bodily injury. To yourself and others. Never call in sick unless you're dead.

--------

But what about when you can't leave it at the door?

What about the day I got a long distance call on the internal kitchen phone line at the French Laundry telling me one of my cousins died in a car crash that morning?

What about the day I worked lunch service shaking & hallucinating-- stone cold sober, because of an internal organ failure?

What about the day you bury the most important person in your life?

What about the day you come home to find your partner with someone else?

What about the day you wake up to terrorist attacks? And the days and weeks that follow waiting for word from people you know who were working in the Twin Towers that day? What about the day you get that phone call you didn't want to get, but knew you were going to, telling you that your worst fears were confirmed?

What about the day you hear from your beloved that she has an incurable illness?

What about the day you go home to find your husband gone & divorce papers on the kitchen table?

What about the day you find a lump in your breast?

What about the day you realize your addiction is, finally, something that needs to be addressed. Now. ?

What about the day you get a call from the school that your child has been hurt?

Then what?

Can you go into the the kitchen that day, that week, those months, and leave it at the door? Cry in the walk- in? Can you go into work and grill or saute or reduce stocks or brunoise meaningless cubes out of vegetables no one is ever going to taste, let alone see your perfect knife skills?

How do you go on?

How do you continue to care about, be inspired by, want to teach, be interested in learning, this exhausting craft, this hungry thirsty insatiable beast of an industry?

Those phone calls, those life altering moments, need to be seen to.

I took time off from cooking to help someone die. I took years off from getting into my chef's coat when I knew I could not give 1000%. I worked in catering when I could not give all of me to a restaurant. I worked in another industry altogether when my grief was so profound I could not sleep or eat or read or speak.

But there are more options than 2.

If you can work through the experience. If you can focus on one hour at a time, one day at a time, one moment at a time, one service at a time, you can accumulate a few hours, a few days, a few months, working through the pain, the anguish.

When you can collect a few of life's breathtaking heartbreaks, and you can get through them, and get to the to the other side, where there is light, you collect hope. Hope doesn't go bad. It collects interest in your bank.

And every time you walk through the coals, you can remember that you once did, you twice did, that before.

Because cooking and baking are verbs, they heal as they work you. Working with your hands, seeing immediate results for your toils, heals. Being in a kitchen with other cooks, many of whom have had serious struggles of their own, humbles us and we can be carried by them, if we allow ourselves to be vulnerable.

Kitchen cooks are pirates. We are survivors even if we're not always the fittest. We romp and we meander. We're train jumpers and responsible citizens alike.

Show me someone in my uniform everyday who does not struggle with the craft, the industry, the grace. That person does not exist. You can use work to avoid life, yes, but what about when work is life? Managing life inside and outside of the kitchen is tricky business.

If there's one thing I know it's this. Cooking and baking and writing about it buoys me. Has set me on course even when I couldn't see land through tears. Has brought me back down to earth when I could see my body floating away from self.

But there are times in a cooks life when saying, "I gotta go." is what needs to be said. Only that cook can know when. And why.

I beg of you this, cooks with the blues, attempt to stick it out. Use the kitchen to heal yourself through the pain. Kitchens steady. Kitchens support. Kitchens weather. Kitchens give perspective, consistency. Kitchens heal.

05 December 2010

For a few years now I've had an idea. I've thought about how terrible it is for the dead to miss their own obituaries. I've often wondered if a person's quality of life might be bettered if she/he knew how appreciated they were. I've had the idea to memorialize the living, not merely the deceased.

I've seen newspaper writers vie to be the ones who set down those words describing those lives as past tense. And I've witnessed thin, hungry and absent obituaries. Unattended memorials. Wordless friends, affection starved grief.

I've read final books, written in someone's last years, and memoirs written in what we call someone's mid-life. We're really lucky if people we love and admire set down words, create art and leave us with something to hear them by, after they die. But it doesn't mean we should wait until they're gone to celebrate them, and what they mean to us, while they are still alive and meandering, imperfectly along, weaving in, like knitted yarn, through their lives and ours.

It can really embarass someone to tell them how much you appreciate their presence in your life. I have friends and colleagues for whom these words would make their skin crawl with disgust. I work for and with and have working for me, people for whom words like this would make them run screaming.

The person who thinks they are the best is the same narcissist who thinks they are the worst.

Some of us are very hard on ourselves. And positive or negative words from those we admire feel the same: like a lie.

I used to work with someone who would have never let you finish a sentence of sappyness. Macho. Or macha, as sex-specific romance language goes. Compliments and criticisms went to the same place with her: on the floor. She wasn't having any of it. Just get the work done. And have a drink after work. Or six. But then one morning, on a day everyone in my generation will remember, she died. Destroyed, evaporated, murdered. Few words left behind. To write any felt impossibly difficult and necessary both.

The difficult and the necessary.

What eggbeater is about. As you know, I sometimes say what no one wants to hear. I sometimes speak for those who can not. I hope to speak from the heart of my industry. {all is fair in love & war} I write words free of sponsored agenda. I work inside real kitchens with real people and real issues, personal and political, domestic and international, human and historical.

I want my idea to become real. I'm going to start writing Living Memorials.

Some of them might be formal, some of them all-inclusive, some of people you have already heard of, some I'm sure don't even know who I am, some of people I've known my whole life.

They will be about people whose lives I find wondrous, complicated, inspiring, joyful, radical, humble, tough, sharp, mysterious, generous, sexy, intense, quixotic, adventurous, frightening, enviable, quiet, colorful and more or less, depending on how you see and experience them yourself.

And I would like you to join me.

If you take up space online, please consider this an open invitation to write a Living Meme too.

There are no rules, none that I'm going to make, at any rate. I just want to see more celebratory words set down about people who are alive and actively living, doing, being. Foibles and all.

09 August 2010

wake up every morning at 7 am regardless of how late/early you went to bed wake up shaky even though you haven't touched caffeine in weeks forget to eat until dinner time don't know what day, date, season it is forget what you forgot start erasing more emails than you read, write or answer put together start paying someone to do your laundry think that the morning of today happened during a different week interview and offer jobs in the same hour make prep lists the size of your first knitted scarf you couldn't figure out how to bind off on stop seeing your bank account drop in funds
start emptying your home fridge into the trash stop buying food for your house stop answering personal calls stop getting personal calls discontinue to commute/walk/ride anywhere that's not in your restaurant's vicinity stop knowing what's happening in the world/your city forget what 'news' is forget what daytime looks like stop eating meals and begin eating tests forget that you own, or have ever worn, any other clothes but your whites start looking at 'normal' people like they're zoo animals realize normal people are looking at you funny don't notice people looking at anything
don't notice anything

06 July 2010

you think you know a place. it's because you do. you know a place so well it hurts. you think you remember. you remember everything, in fact. you remember what never be spoken again. you remember what would never be believed, now. you remember. you remember her. you remember being small. you remember being hungry. you remember every apartment, ever park, every school, every block, every friend, every everything. you think you know a place.

just because you know a place. does not mean you can know a place forever. places change. places die. places transform. places grow old with you. and the same place, looks young to someone
else.

you think you know a place. and then you go away. for a long time. you visit. when you can afford to. when you cannot afford to. and subtly, you see the changes in your place. years go by. you live in a half dozen places. you try and call each of them home.

but you know where you're from. you know who made you. you know what made you. you can never forget. even when you drink even when you cut even when you hide even when you run even when you drown even when you love

you think you know a place.

it's because you do.

and now. now is decades later. now she's gone. but you see her everywhere. most of all, she resides in you.

and now. the place is yours again. and so you walk. and walk. and walk.

you think you know a place. but it never hurts to re-introduce. to explore.to make lists. to go back. to show the city that's yours, that's home, that's complicated

to someone else. to yourself. you take yourself on dates. notice. stare. look up!

this place you know? this place you have known forever? this place that has made you. fought you. scarred you. challenged you. held you close. never let go. never meant to--- this place that you have always loved? this place you have always feared? this place you have always tasted. even when you called elsewhere home.

this place is meant to be shared.

you think you know a place. because you do. because you can. because you want.{you want so hard.}

14 June 2010

The world is your oyster. Right now. As spring turns into summer. Before the holidays and after late winter's lull.

Restaurants have seasons they like to open in. They follow the moon, in a crazy sort of way.

And right now, the moon is very full, pregnant, in fact, with imminent births.

If you want to cook New York City, may I suggest you check in with Craigslist today? Whether it be in San Francisco, somewhere in the delicious deep South, or right here in the Big Apple, a city for which sleep is not needed, you might see a posting you want to answer.

New York is your oyster. Whether you swallow or chew, spurn or hoard, relish or retch, eat traif or not, come and get it while the gettin' is good.